39 bones found in search for 9/11 remains

In the largest such find in months, forensic anthropologists recovered 39 bones from a road being dug up at ground zero in the search for still-buried human remains of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The recovery, made in a nearby facility where anthropologists are hand-searching debris, was the largest in a day since October 19, when utility workers came across about 80 bones in a long-abandoned manhole at the World Trade Center site.

City officials are digging up the road, which had carried construction trucks in and out of the site since it was rebuilt in the spring of 2002, and they plan to search the site of a destroyed church and hundreds of manholes for more remains.

The original nine-month cleanup of the destroyed twin towers yielded more than 20,000 human remains of the nearly 3,000 victims.

Since September 2005, more than 1,000 more have been found on a vacant skyscraper across from the site and in the service road on the western edge of the site. None has been identified.

Officials involved in the initial cleanup of the 16-acre site have said pieces of steel could have pierced the ground when they fell off the towers, creating openings where remains could get in.

The city plans to spend $30 million on the latest search, which is expected to take a year.

© HT Media Ltd.